In the loveliest segment of the one-act monologue Going Back Naked - the first half of New Ground Theatre's Going Back Naked: Two Plays by Local Playwrights - author Melissa McBain, portraying herself, reads from her late mother's 70-year-old love letters, and lands on a passage wherein her Mom refers to the children she hopes to one day have with her young paramour. Marveling that she was being thought of a full decade before she was actually born, McBain takes a beat and smiles, and addresses her absent mother in tones of longing and wonder: "You imagined me."

After local productions of Altar Call in 2005 and Yard Sale in 2007, area playwright Melissa McBain's latest endeavor - opening April 30 at the Village of East Davenport's Village Theatre - is the solo presentation Going Back Naked. And if you think that's a strange title for a play, its author says she originally considered one that was even more unusual.
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As with a person, sometimes you can fall immediately, madly, irrationally in love with a play. And I think I fell in love with author Charles Morey's Laughing Stock within its first two minutes, when artistic director Gordon Page (Don Hazen) introduced visiting actor Jack Morris (Alex Klimkewicz) to his venerated theatre in New Hampshire, and the young man took a moment to assess his surroundings before saying, incredulously, "It's a barn."






